“Tuesday, Nov. 2nd. ‘The deed—of life—was done!’—This morning, 11.30 a.m., I, S. L. J.-B., first of all women, matriculated as ‘Civis Academiae Edinensis!’—Tonight for the first time 5 women are undergraduates!—Hurrah! ‘With exactness grinds He all.’” “I do indeed congratulate you undergraduates with all my heart,” wrote Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, who had now settled in London. “It seems to me the grandest success that women have yet achieved in England; it is the great broad principle established that conducts to every noble progress. I feel as if I _must_ come up to Edinburgh in the course of the winter, to see and bless the class! Perhaps towards the close of the term would be best,—advise me.” So began a winter’s work that for most, if not all, of the women students, was an experience of extraordinary interest and happiness. S. J.-B. and Edith Pechey had settled together in Buccleuch Place, and the house was a _rendezvous_ for a choice little circle. It would be difficult to say which of the two proved the greater attraction to their friends. Miss Pechey was younger, more adaptable, less obviously alarming, though possibly more critical really, in proportion as she had seen less of life. The reader is already aware that S. J.-B., though a most interesting person to live with, was not by any means always an easy person to live with, particularly when she was overworked and overstrained. For her friends as well as herself it was sometimes a question—in her own significant words—of, “Ware crash!” Moreover, although she often gave to others the advice,—“Glissez, mortels: n’appuyez pas!”, she not infrequently failed to act on it herself: she still, as when a child, staked her happiness too readily on matters that might better have been regarded as trifles: and this is a characteristic that becomes a more serious factor in domestic and social life as the years go on. On the other hand, when she really “let herself go” in her most intimate circle, there was no one like her. The diary and the letters give scarcely an indication of the sense of humour and fun that were so ready to bubble over into real whole-hearted laughter. The eyes so familiar with sorrow could still sparkle with merriment like a child’s, and, when anything struck her as irresistibly preposterous or comical, she had a way of “tossing them up to the ceiling and catching them again” that was a joy to behold. Increasingly as life went on, she was a touchstone on which to test the things that might be said, the stories that might be told. She could enjoy a joke that would have shocked many women of her generation; but, as her Mother had said long before, “anything impure ran off her mind like quicksilver,” and she was a past master in the art of calling home a conversation that was lingering too long in permissible bye-ways.